Packaging education: Specialized degrees can help solve sustainability challenges and more, experts say

10 Jul 2019 --- The size and value of the global packaging industry are ever-expanding, but the amount of university-level, packaging-specific degrees and courses remains relatively low. It has been predicted that by 2020 the global packaging industry will be worth US$1 trillion. However, until Michigan State University (MSU) established its packaging program in 1952, there were no university-based packaging education programs in the world, and packaging is still a very new discipline. Leading FMCGs are now attaching increased significance to packaging as a means to facilitate improved sustainability, as well as the rise of e-commerce and on-the-go convenience across industries and products. PackagingInsights investigates whether the discrepancy between the growing importance of packaging and the availability of specialized packaging education needs to change.

Dr. Susan Selke, Director of the MSU School of Packaging, explains that since the MSU program launched in 1952, it has taken time for a variety of sectors, including government and industry, to recognize that packaging education can offer a unique perspective and set of skills that can result in very tangible benefits.

“For a long time, I think the perception was that anyone could design packaging – especially any engineer. The benefits of the highly interdisciplinary and applied perspective that education in packaging offers was often not appreciated. Further, since the discipline is still so new, the unique fundamental knowledge that it can offer is also still new,” Selke tells PackagingInsights.

Similarly, UK packaging expert, Mike Swain, who embarked on a packaging career after studying a bachelor’s degree in Materials Science, believes that the lack of packaging courses is a consequence of the evolution of the packaging industry and its “somewhat ‘invisible’ appreciation in the general public’s eye.”

“It is always an easier conversation to sell something ‘sexy’ rather than functional and mostly ‘invisible.’ Other industries are far more exciting and enticing, making large ticket value items like cars and houses, rather than basic functional items, for pennies, by the millions, as we do in packaging,” Swain says.

Furthermore, UK packaging expert and Associate Lecturer at The Open University, Richard Coles, adds that there is no cohesive “packaging industry” and as such little or no consensus of the requirements for packaging because of its disparate, or highly fragmented, nature, which also hinders the development of packaging courses.It has been predicted that by 2020, the global packaging industry will be worth US$1 trillion, but packaging courses remain few and far between.

“There are so many industry stakeholders, from material supply industries to design agencies. Yet the media often collectively refer to these sectors of commercial packaging activity as ‘the packaging industry,’ whereas it is preferable to refer to ‘the packaging chain’ and to specify the particular sector,” Coles says.

“Consequently, the education and training requirements are wide-ranging depending on the type of product to be packaged in a given sector, the desired skills requirements of company personnel in a variety of packaging-related roles and their motivations. For example, these packaging-related roles include material scientists, technologists, designers, production engineers and technicians, market executives, purchasing and sales representatives,” he tells PackagingInsights.

Until recently in the UK, there were degree courses in packaging at both B.Sc. Hons and MSc level which ran successfully for many years. However, for various reasons, these programs were not sustained even though there was solid practical industry support and great industry demand for the graduates, Coles remembers.

What needs to change?
According to Coles, there needs to be strong marketing of packaging courses, particularly at diploma and postgraduate level, in order to attract students. In 2018, Newcastle University, UK, launched a two-year part-time Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course in Food Packaging aimed at industry professionals working in the packaging supply chain. However, Coles’ general perception is that there has been a degree of reticence by UK Universities to launch packaging programs despite the evidence of success at thriving packaging schools at US universities, such as MSU.

For Selke, in general, there needs to be a growing demand from employers for graduates with unique packaging skills and knowledge, which will by extension increase the number of students seeking out a packaging degree. 

For the well-established MSU Packaging School, however, student interest has never been an issue. “For several decades we have had to limit the number of students in our program to keep the demand from overwhelming our ability to teach, and our employment rates remain well over 90 percent,” she notes.

“What is a bigger problem is resources, in terms of faculty, space, equipment. In most programs, faculty need to have a Ph.D. – MSU is the only place in the world, outside of China, where individuals can obtain a Ph.D. degree that is officially in Packaging. That makes recruiting faculty a challenge and programs cannot healthily grow without well-prepared faculty,” Selke explains.

“Similarly, good packaging education demands considerable hands-on experience and that isn’t inexpensive to provide. So, it comes down to resources – of various types. Further, advancing the discipline of packaging, rather than simply educating students at the level of current knowledge, requires an investment in research. Faculty need both time and funding to develop, implement and teach new knowledge. Research is a core part of the university mission and is arguably even more critical in a still-emerging discipline such as packaging,” she adds.

Meanwhile, Dr. Roland ten Klooster, Professor of Packaging Design and Management at the University of Twente, the Netherlands, believes that the structure of big companies needs to change to recognize packaging as its own entity before we will see more attention given to packaging-specific courses.

“In the boardroom of big companies, packaging can be part of finance, marketing, operations and more, but if it were to become an independent entity then it would begin to receive a more adequate focus. The first packaging graduates from Twente entered the industry in 2007 – they now have positions where they can influence decisions and their responsibility to highlight the significance of packaging will grow. From the almost 90 graduates, around 50 work in the field of packaging and they are the first packaging engineers/technologist/designers with a university degree,” Klooster explains.

Marc Pruijssers, Program Manager for Food Innovation at HAS University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands, agrees that packaging-specific degrees are one way to respond to packaging industry needs. However, he also believes that generic engineering and design degrees, or food technology degrees, can also provide individuals with the foundations for a successful career in packaging.The packaging industry faces numerous modern day challenges, including the demand for increased sustainability and the rise of e-commerce; specialized packaging degrees can help train bright minds to meet these challenges.

“Mechanical or chemical engineers, designers and food technologists who join packaging companies or take packaging roles are very much capable of acquiring specific expertise and experience ‘on the job’ as they develop their packaging expertise,” Pruijssers tells PackagingInsights.

How is industry impacted by a lack of specialized packaging education?
The vast majority of people in packaging have entered it by accident and not by design, according to Swain. The consequence is the skill level of those in packaging is very wide. “Many are very skilled, bright and can transfer their skills immediately and be very successful, while some others will struggle and not achieve the potential they could have if they entered as a first career,” he explains.

Klooster is concerned that a lack of specialized university-level packaging education is part of the reason why companies often “do not have an answer on the plastic issues and make the wrong decisions.” 

Likewise, Coles explains that there is a fast-growing global skills shortage of well-qualified packaging engineers, technologists, designers and innovators that will likely result in the adoption of many sub-optimal or inadequate packaging solutions leading to greater waste of resources, financial loss and environmental impacts.

“These packaging skills are also urgently needed to help secure food supply for an increasingly urbanized global population – demand on the food supply system is predicted to increase by around 70 percent by 2050 – and to address environmental crises such as climate change and marine plastics pollution.”

On the point of financial losses and the search for increased sustainability, Selke comments that employers often hire MSU graduates at least in part because doing so ends up saving the companies more money than the cost of the personnel.

“While that certainly isn’t always true, I think it illustrates the point that an employee who understands packaging in a deeper and more thorough way can guide better decisions than an employee who doesn’t have that set of skills,” Selke says.

“This should become a routine part of the product design process, not just an afterthought when someone realizes they need a way to get that product to the consumer. This will become even more important as we move towards incorporation of sustainability and circular economy principles into both products and the packages that allow us to have them,” she adds.

Should industry do more to facilitate packaging education?
The answer to this question from all PackagingInsights’ interviewees is a resounding yes. In the view of Coles, for instance, graduates should be offered scholarships by industry to study packaging courses up to CPD, MSc and Ph.D. levels.

“The return on investment would be well rewarded for businesses and their supply chains whilst helping advance their employees’ career prospects. We are in a world of rapidly advancing technological innovation and this requires a healthy pool of well qualified talented packaging folk to exploit the market opportunities as well as help create a more sustainable future. Industry support to help finance students’ packaging education is vital,” Coles stresses.

While Swain is in agreement, he points out that this would require competitors to collaborate and peers to communicate in a very disparate sector, with very different needs for each individual organization. 

“Given the focus now driven by governments on packaging to ‘pull its socks up’ and fix the environmental issues, I honestly believe there should be a focus with support of the ‘education ministries’ of all governments on the provision of further academic education to encourage bright young professionals to enter the sector and ensure we achieve the long term goals of a truly circular economy,” Swain says.MSU Packaging School's success is linked in part to consistent support from both the University and industry since it was established in 1952.

“I would ask the professional societies, experienced individuals and independent experts to council on this education to come to a viable idea, as industry will have too much focus on its own agendas that will protract the conversation and delay the outcome,” he adds.

Selke tells PackagingInsights that the success of the MSU Packaging School can be attributed in part to the “excellent support over the years from both the industry and from the University.” Further, she explains that being part of a research-intensive land-grant university like MSU has reinforced the importance of generating new knowledge, not just teaching sets of skills, and has provided a very rich environment for collaboration with other faculty from diverse disciplines.

Education, education, education
The interviewees are in agreement that academia should offer packaging degrees based around the right broad skills for sound packaging capability with specific knowledge and specialization as is needed by industry. As Swain concludes, the unprecedented focus now on packaging, with the environmental imperative, means we need to educate and train bright young people in packaging and ensure our sustainable future.

Presently in the UK, there is limited provision for packaging education at universities, though there are some courses available in Packaging Design, for example at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Newcastle’s new two-year part-time Food Packaging Post Graduate Certificate. Also, a number of University postgraduate programs include Packaging, such as M.Sc. in Food Innovation at the Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich.

In addition, there is a light sprinkling of universities across Europe offering undergraduate programs in packaging, such as the University of Reims’ Engineering Diploma in Packaging and Conditioning (ESEIC).

By Joshua Poole